


Musings of the Dead; or an Evening in the World of Thelma Howcroft

by Poetic_Poltergeist



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Clinical Vampirism, Cotard's Delusion, Cotard's Disorder, Decay, Mental Illness, PTSD, Putrefying, Refusal to Eat, Walking Corpse Syndrome, mental health patient, pembroke hospital, physical disfigurement, rot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:48:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28436406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetic_Poltergeist/pseuds/Poetic_Poltergeist
Summary: Thelma Howcroft's is a vampire, a walking corpse searching for blood to keep decay at bay.My gift for the Pembroke Hospital secret Santa exchange.
Relationships: Thelma Howcroft/Thomas Elwood, Thomas Howcroft and Thomas Elwood
Kudos: 7





	Musings of the Dead; or an Evening in the World of Thelma Howcroft

Staring down at the bowl filled with broth and vegetables with a frown across her face, Thelma Howcroft vehemently refused the food placed before her. For days now, it had been like this, forced to sit in front of disgusting food scraps for an eternity until whatever nurse was trying to shove a meal down her throat gave up. Why were they incapable of understanding? She hungered not for broth but blood! All this pathetic bowl did was remind her of the wretched life she had lost aeons ago.

The worst part was that some treacherous part of her still wanted to eat the food, some foggy memory of humanity, of the life she no longer had. Her own body ached for it when she had no other choice but to stare at food. Walking the shadows in the halls of the hospital, she could ignore the sharp stabs and dull aches of hunger. She was simply confusing her need for blood with the remnants of human hunger. When she combed her hair to pull away chunks of the tangled, damaged mess, it was because she was a walking corpse. Her pale skin and the never-ending chill in her bones were too from her cadaverous state. 

The trembling skeleton fingers pushed the bowl away, only to have it shoved back into place by their opposite; hands made calloused and ruddy from labour and tending to patients suffering every variety and ailment. Thelma could smell the dried blood on the hospital staff’s skin and clothes, no matter how much they scrubbed.

“Eat, Miss Howcroft,” the ever-pestering Nurse Hawkins demanded. Thelma could not comprehend why she had to be tended to by the most stubborn out of all the nurses.

“I do not need to eat, Mortal! For I am dead, my body has no need to consume such things!” she argued back. “This bowl contains not what sustenance I need.”

“What do you need then, Miss Howcroft?” Nurse Hawkins asked dully. Perhaps Hawkins would have been a proper nurse for the infirm if it was not for her blasé and perpetually overwrought demeanour. At least it was not Branagan, who had enough optimism to make Thelma want to choke.

“I need blood, nurse! warm, rich, vibrant blood!” Thelma proclaimed, crossing her arms and turning her chin away from the bowl in dismay and disgust.

Oh, how she yearned for blood! The thought of it made her mouth water, and she could hardly keep herself from leaping at patients who came in bleeding. An overwhelming yearning to feel it on her lips and to taste it filled her decaying brain. It would flood her rotting insides with life once more, warming her icy touch and freeing her bones from the stiffness of death.

“And why do you need blood, Miss Howcroft?”

“For I am a vampire! I hear the beating of the hearts around me. I shamble through these halls, craving a single drop of blood so that my body will retain the smallest spark of life!” This was not the first time they had this discussion, and it would not be their last. Each was stubborn and refused to yield to the other. Thelma found it terribly annoying nobody seemed to believe her, and those who did forced her to repeat herself endlessly. Perhaps searching for evidence that she was lying. 

The little game she played, pretending to be alive, grew to be tiresome at times; she knew they saw through her disguise like a thin veil. Yet, when she admitted her condition, they called her crazy and refused to believe her. Their persistence of this infuriated her, how they mockingly demanded proof of her powers when she already explained she was weak from not feeding. She held far more strength than a human still, and she had to soothe her wrath not to decimate them. At times, she almost believed their lies that she was crazy. Of course, she wasn’t; she really was a vampire! How else could she explain the feeling of her body putrifying around her?

“Uh-huh,” the nurse sighed, rubbing her face with her palms as if Thelma was some sort of problematic child. “Unfortunately, I do not have any blood to give you, so this will have to do.”

“I would rather not pollute my cadaver with your concoctions. I beseech you to let me go.” Despite Thelma’s protests, she found herself more enticed by the contents of the bowl the longer she was near it. What little scraps of humanity she had left began to resurface and betrayed her undead state, and after days and hours of such nonsense, she felt her control wavering. 

“You need to eat,” Nurse Hawkins spoke firmly.

“If I eat, will you let me leave?” Thelma toyed with the spoon as she stared at the bowl, chewing on her lip. She hated herself for giving in, for willfully agreeing to stuff such nonsense in her cadaver. 

“Yes, but only if you eat all of it and manage to keep it down.” It sounded like a challenge, and Thelma took it, attempting to spoon as much of the limp vegetables and broth as possible into her mouth. She wanted to vomit with every bite, but she could not make herself stop.

“Slow down, or you’ll throw up. Take smaller bites,” Hawkins scolded. With a growl, Thelma obeyed, carefully swallowing bite painfully slowly. However, she quickly fell into the motions and was surprised when she scraped the bottom of the bowl.

“Can I leave now?” Thelma dropped the spoon unceremoniously onto the table.

“If you can manage to behave yourself,” Hawkins said, already cleaning up. 

As Thelma stood, the world was swallowed by a pulsating nothingness obscuring her vision and filling her head with cotton. She lost control of her traitorous bloodless body as she was forced to lurch forward as her legs wobbled and gave in. Stumbling, she tried to regain her balance but ended up crumpled on her knees, her forearms pressed to the floor and supporting her head.

All she could hear was blood, pulsing through living veins with tremendous force, marching to the rhythm of a determined heartbeat. The sounds of the hospital drowned under the noise, a great sea of brilliant red and abyssal black stealing her senses as she was pulled back to the grave. 

After a few seconds painfully crept by, her vision returned, and her body re-animated. Popping back up onto her feet, she scowled at the nurse.

“See! My rotting corpse needs blood! I am beginning to return to the sleep of death already! It is only so long until my body refuses to move!”

“Miss Howcroft, you had a headrush,” Nurse Hawkins attempted to explain as if words crafted for the living would ease the dead. 

“Nonsense, mere mortals cannot understand. You know nothing of the vampiric condition.” Putting her hands on her hips, she shook her head in dismissal before wandering off to the courtyard. How dare Nurse Hawkins presume that she understood the undead state! 

All-day clouds had covered the sky as rain and thunder were released from the heavens until the entire world was soaked to its core. Mud squished between her toes as she walked, reminding her she still could not remember where her shoes went. 

The mud felt strange, soft, malleable, yet chilling. Grinning like a child, she leapt around, splashing about, and wiggling her feet in it. Her disgusting liquifying insides sloshed around, but she could not bear to stop. Time spent post-mortem had to be treasured, she had already lost all recollection of her living world, and the idea of stopping and wasting her time to fret over her decay was more sickening than she was.

Only when her sluggish and rotten muscles cried out did she finally stop, allowing the slurring of her insides to at last come to an end and ease the pain in her stomach. She was done frolicking, she decided, and instead retreated to her usual seat in the garden.

Sitting on the bench, Thelma could see the curve of her femurs and knobby knees. Her hands felt like ice in her lap as she twisted her boney fingers together. People told her she looked too thin, but she didn’t see it. She was small, yes, but surely not unhealthy.

Not that it mattered, she was dead anyway.

Dead. Dead. Dead. It played like a mantra, over and over in her head.

Thelma was really, truly, dead, rotting upright as she walked among the living as a vampire, a creature cursed to preserve her rotting corpse by consuming the blood of the living. She desperately needed it, to pour the irony liquid down her throat and drink it until she drowned. Yet, she could not bring herself to attack anyone to steal even a taste. She survived entirely on the few sips Thomas offered her.

She had become pale and bloodless from her starvation; her fingers and limbs were stiff with death. The sickly sweet stench of death followed her, permeating everything she touched. Thinking of food made her jellified insides churn, but not nearly as much as the feeling of a beating heart in her chest did. Disintegrating skin clinging to bones was all she was.

Thelma despised her own monstrosity, doomed to live eternity as a putrefying corpse. She could barely stand herself, and yet, here she was, hiding in a hospital full of the dying as if she was a walking reminder of what was to come. No matter how she tried to hide her undead state, she feared they saw through her glamour regardless. Why anyone bothered to keep her around, she could not fathom.

In the midst of her thoughts, Thelma almost missed the sound of feet traversing through the mud. The steps were heavy set and oddly timed as if the person they carried was avoiding sinking too far into the mud.

“Who dares approach me? What petty mortal wishes to face their final fate at the hands of Thelma Howcroft?” she demanded into the darkness. She really should have been paying attention, the people who hunted her were ruthless in their pursuit. The kind Doctor Reid, whom she long suspected to be a fellow creature of the night, would not always be around to assist her in deterring her assailants. Besides, she had to protect the human residents of the hospital from monsters far less benevolent than herself. 

“It is merely I, my lady of the night,” the familiar forlorn voice of Thomas Elwood replied as his shape emerged from the mist. His steps were more awkward than usual, taking broad and slow strides, failing to avoid dampening his slippers in the mud. 

“Ah, of course. You may draw near, mortal!” Dear Thomas, the precious human who was so willing to brave her undead state.

“Thank you for sparing me from your wrath and gracing me with your company. May I ask what you are doing out this evening?” he asked, shaking some mud off the bottom of his shoe. “Surely you are cold and miserable covered in so much mud.”

“Lamenting this wretched prison of rotting flesh I am entrapped within!” Thelma exclaimed dramatically. “The dark clouds have yet to part, but for now, the rain has stopped. Mud covers all, much like the night I escaped from the grave. It has been long since then, and I can hear my bones creaking now. It will not be long until my flesh sloughs off.”

“For I am but your humble servant, it pains me to hear you suffer so. How can I aid you?” Thomas asked, finding a seat beside his dark mistress.

“Blood! I need more blood! What little remains in me is drying in my veins!” Did he grow tired of her demands? Would he really bleed himself dry for her? “Tell me the truth, mortal! Why is it you return to this hollow shell? Are you truly so enthralled by me?”

“But of course I am! Besides, no living woman would show any kindness a mug like mine.” He found their bond suiting, Thelma’s head may have been filled with death, and Thomas’s life had been oversaturated with it. His face was that of an ugly corpse, and she was a beautiful display of death. 

Once, on one of his increasingly rare stays away from the hospital, he had gone about every bookstore in the surrounding districts to present her with a collection of all the vampire stories he could gather. He had occasionally seen her with a beaten and stained copy of Dracula. The yellow cover was filthy, and the spine was so cracked the water damaged pages fell out with the slightest effort. When he had handed her the collection, she had thanked him in her usual unusual manner. As she read through them, she would come up to him with commentary, how she was fond of Carmilla and Lord Ruthven but found the Pennydreadful Varney obnoxious. She used the terminology from The Family of the Vourdalak for weeks before realising nobody could understand her. The excitement in her voice, the gleam in eyes, the grin on her face, how utterly happy she was reading and discussing her stories made the cost of the books and the scoldings from the hospital staff a mere trifle in comparison. Since then, he was always searching for more books to bring her.

“Do not speak nonsense to me!” Thelma scoffed.

“But it is true! All who I try to speak to run in fear, yet you do not even turn your chin in disgust.” In his youth he was considered quite charming, lasses would flock to him in the hopes he would share their affections. Perhaps he had broken too many hearts, become too confident, and the price to pay was his face. “Only the undead such as you can understand.”

“You did not choose to look this way, nor did I chose to be a child of the night,” Thelma exclaimed, widely motioning outward. She saw none of the flaws Thomas spoke of, to her he looked like all the other mortals. His heart beat with the rest, yet they feared him. “But humans are cruel, judgemental things, banishing the both of us to the edges of their world! Forcing us to hide in darkness!” 

“Thus, I am at your beck and call, your humble human servant. No living soul could make sense of someone like me, looking like the charred remains of death’s head,” he replied. She was such a joy to be with, and the smiles she managed to twist his mouth into were worth the pain. 

“But you are mortal still! I am a rotting corpse who feasts upon humanity!” Thelma’s knack for the dramatics never failed to cheer Thomas up. He wished he could live in her world with her forever.

“I may be mortal, but I am far more monstrous than the average bloke,” he sighed, looking away to a point in the distant fog. “My own children ran from the sight of me.”

“You are no monster, Thomas Elwood.”

“Neither are you, Thelma Howcroft.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are the coal that keeps my steam engine heart writing.  
> Constructive criticism is always welcome; I strive to improve.


End file.
